


Time When . . .

by Tassos



Category: Firefly, Supernatural
Genre: 14_valentines, Character of Color, Crossover, F/M, Female Character of Color, Fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-04
Updated: 2009-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-02 11:36:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tassos/pseuds/Tassos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She got a woman's notion is how Jayne puts it ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time When . . .

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the Firefly BDM.

When the story gets told later it always begins different. Kaylee says it begins when Wash died, leaving her with an empty bed and unfulfilled dreams. Simon thinks it was dusting off a crying child that fell and scrapped her knee one day when they were in the market of some little backwater. Mal doesn't say, because he knows better, but Zoe knows he thinks it's when she ended an argument between him and Kaylee by asking what would happen if it was her with child. He'd got real quiet and they just looked at each other. No one said nothing after that, like it didn't happen, but months later, more'n a year after Miranda and Wash and rebuilding a life in the Black, no one was too surprised when Zoe asked Simon for a pregnancy test.

She got a woman's notion is how Jayne puts it with a slightly disgusted shake of the head at Zoe so vulnerable to something so womanly, not that she ain't womanly, he always hastens to add. River giggles and just says it was time, and Inara only smiles and skips straight to the part with the bar.

On that point everyone agrees. There was definitely a bar.

Zoe, whose memory should be trusted best, remembers the music the most. Hard drums and guitar with a pounding beat and an up melody. It was a miners' bar on a mining planet that was maybe better off than some others, enough for a little bit of an upper crust that avoided bars like these with their rotgut and pool tables and a layer of scum an inch thick over everything and everyone.

They were there to meet a man looking to move some roasted ore left over from the smelters that were prime material for gravel making and cement, though Jayne swore it was for remining silver that hadn't all oozed out and Mal says they were actually skimming off the ore and only calling it roasted, but in any case, the bar was scummy with dust and soot and full of men and women just off an honest day's work. It was crowded and smelled of diesel and burnt rock, with the music pounding away. Perfect for a meet really, hiding in plain sight. Zoe sat by Mal while Jayne was leaning on the wall a table back, but her job was looking for any trouble that might come their way. Mal always says, though, that he never told her to give it an engraved invitation.

"Naw, she was already scoping the place out," says Jayne, though she wasn't. "Just wasn't paying attention to her job for the pretty," amends Mal with a wicked smile.

And he was pretty, but that wasn't what caught her eye. Zoe was keeping a look out, not one to let her guard down on a job, and just so was paying close attention to everyone else in bar while the music played hard and that was what it was. One man by the pool tables, singing along. And not just singing shy-like, but belting it out enough to hear him a little over the noise, head bobbing, foot tapping, and all the while studying the game he was playing. He didn't look no different than any of the rest, though maybe his face was a mite cleaner. Tall with short hair and a layer of dirt over well patched clothes, but it was the singing that struck Zoe.

For all his pretty face, he looked a bit like an overgrown kid singing like that, young and goofy. It struck Zoe that that'd be something that Wash would do.

She shook off those thoughts quick enough and went back to looking for trouble.

She wouldn't say it was then she made a decision, or even after when business was done. Thing was, Zoe always knew she wanted a child one day. She'd thought it'd be with Wash but his passing didn't stop her wanting. Jayne spoke the truth, and Kaylee and Mal, too, in part, but River perhaps had the right of it.

The memory of Wash was thick in that bar that night and two days spent trying to ignore the hole he left as if it were torn new didn't mean nothing when they went back to seal the deal and that miner was still there, still singing while he played his game. Zoe's eyes kept straying that night while she, Mal, and Jayne got drinks before heading back to Serenity.

He was good at pool, winning a little here and there but never so much to clean a person out. Better players he played up, worse he played down, singing and chatting and none the wiser that they were playing a pro. Watching, he didn't so much remind her of Wash no more, but something had taken root. It'd been more'n a year and her bed cold all that time.

Jayne says she walked over, intentions plain as daylight. He was there, he should know, but Zoe, says, "You were arguing over who was less likely to shoot us on sight when we fenced the ore and didn't even notice."

She took a stool by the pool table - hard balls with chipping paint - with half a notion of getting the singing miner's attention and feeling like an old soldier who'd forgotten how.

He noticed her come over. Quick eyes running from head to toe and not just as a man looking at a woman, but as a man looking for a threat. He nodded as she passed, professional like, then started a bit when he realized she'd stayed to watch. The game was almost done and though he didn't say nothing, he preened and stopped singing, throwing her looks as he moved around the table.

Mal says Zoe just sat there, easy as you please, calm like the calm she wore in a den full of armed men twice her size. Poor fella didn't know what to do with that, knocking his shots, so confused he cleaned his opponent out without hardly noticing.

"Don't blame him," says Jayne. "It was plain unnatural. With a look like that, Zoe's as soon shoot you if you stepped wrong." That's when Zoe gives Jayne that look and he shuffles back to a safe distance saying, "Don't mean nothing by it."

When the game was over and no one else had stepped up to play, that's when he spoke. Leaning on his cue, he said, "Table's free."

Zoe took her time in answering. "What's the stakes?" Her drink was long gone and she was just sitting back watching him. He didn't seem to mind even though he couldn't quite figure it.

He shrugged without taking his eyes off her. "Whatever you want," and this time when his eyes raked over her they weren't looking for a threat. Curious, they were, and come to a decision. "Don't have to be nothing," he said, words stretching with the smile that teased his lips. "I'm a sure thing as long as I walk out of here in one piece." He nodded back toward Mal and Jayne who'd finally sat up and paid attention.

When Zoe glanced over they both looked away.

"Don't mind them," she said, a fond smile of her own creeping out. Standing, she reached for the other cue and nodded for him to rack up. "You gotta name?"

"Dean." His face lit up as he grinned, all boyish and bright again.

She lined up the break. "Zoe."

Mal's the one who slaps Jayne when he wonders too loud why they even bothered with the game when they didn't speak none. He'd seen the looks Dean gave her, the light touches he set as they moved around each other, like water over rock, dancing another game underneath. He saw the smile Zoe wore when Dean started singing again soft and thoughtless, like he couldn't help it. He saw an ease in her that he hadn't seen in a long time.

Zoe remembers spending the first part of the game thinking, "yes or no," not quite thinking about what she was thinking yes or no to. Dean asked a question or two, but let it lie when she didn't really answer and instead flirted with his hands and eyes. It was easier in a way, him not filling the space with jokes or nervous chatter like Wash would, but it was strange, too, when he touched her, hands too large and shadow too tall, waking her body that had settled under the aches. Still, wasn't till he sunk the eight ball that she decided yes. As long as he took a bath first.

What happened next only Jayne is thoughtless enough to speculate on and never in Zoe's hearing. Kaylee gets a soft look in her eye or makes lovey eyes at Simon who usually ducks his head even as he smiles. River smiles too but everyone pretends they don't know she probably plucked it straight from Zoe's head. Only Inara knows some of it.

Zoe, two months in, queasy and quaky from general unpleasantness and burdened down by regret, went to Inara's shuttle with half a notion to end it. Inara sat her down, gave her tea, and waited patiently for Zoe to sort her thoughts.

"It ain't him exactly. He was good and he paid attention and knew his way round, but I wasn't all there." She stared into her teacup and swallowed the frog in her throat, willing the tears she hadn't cried in a year back under her eyeballs. "He was . . . he wasn't . . . "

"He wasn't Wash." Inara gripped her empty hand and Zoe held tight. She hated this feeling, like she was floating in space without a tether and being knocked about. Hormones, she knew, at least in part. Simon had explained all that to both her and everyone else but it didn't make it easier. Grief was like a ship passing in the Black, silent and unseen until it was upon you. Some days Zoe couldn't breathe for the hurt and only putting one foot in front of the other and rote routine of a captain that needed her kept her going. Having a stranger's child wouldn't replace Wash or bring him back or even be a part of Wash she could hold onto.

"But he's yours too," Inara told her. "And he'll know Wash because he can't know you or Serenity without knowing Wash."

Zoe still felt like she was crazy for going through with it, but when she left Inara's shuttle steadier, she thought maybe it was the kind of crazy she could live with. The kind that kept her by Mal's side through every harebrained scheme and bad idea.

"You all right?" he asked her late one night a while later. He was on watch keeping an eye on the bridge from the galley. Zoe couldn't sleep and had come up for tea to settle her stomach.

"Fine." Mal waved her to stay at the table while he put on the kettle for her. The look he sent while he did said more about not believing her than otherwise.

"Really, I'm fine," said Zoe. She was too. Most of the time. They hadn't much talked about it, 'sides from the practicalities. Mal had crossed his arms when she told him and asked, "You want me to find him?" He never said what for, but Zoe knew what he meant. Kill him or tell him, whatever she wanted, but Zoe said, "no." It may not have been exactly planned but it weren't exactly an accident either.

When the tea was ready, Mal joined her at the table sipping from his own mug. "I'm not kicking you off, but you want to set down a spell, you let me know."

"No," said Zoe. She didn't have anywhere to go and if she did there was nowhere else she wanted to be. Most her life she'd spent in the Black and she didn't see that changing anytime soon.

Mal nodded and Zoe knew it for his own relief and reassurance and let the silence settle over them, gentle like.

"It scares me," she said after a while, hands warm around her mug. "I can already feel everything changing."

A half smile found its way to Mal's face. "Things going to be changing a mite more," he said nodding at her flat belly.

"Not just that," said Zoe. "I look at my bunk different now. See all the stuff that's got to change."

"Boat's not much of a place for a child," Mal said quietly, the crux of his argument with Kaylee. Bad enough for River, he'd said then.

"Maybe not yet," said Zoe. She didn't plan on leaving and there was time enough to set things straight.

"You're not planning on redecorating everything, are you? 'Cause I'm not footing that bill." If she needed it though, he would, but that didn't need saying aloud. Mal's tea was half gone and he set to draining the rest. "Didn't think you'd ever go down this road."

"Not even with Wash?"

"Didn't let myself think it then," said Mal. "Bad enough you married him."

Zoe smiled. "I wanted to."

"I know."

The silence settled again as they listen to Serenity in the night. Mal never says he was scared too, though Kaylee swears it's why he kicked up such a fuss about proofing the latches on the bunks and tidying up the galley and the cabinets. That he never made a fuss about the baby itself, well, that just meant he knew it'd be okay in the end.

Things changed slowly. Zoe met with Simon every few weeks and though he warned her he'd only ever done one rotation in obstetrics he still knew what was supposed to happen when. Every time he listened for the baby's heartbeat he got a smile on his face like it was the most amazing thing in the 'verse. Then he let Zoe listen and it was.

"That's him?" Zoe said the first time, her own smile cracking open wide and awed.

"Or her," said Simon. "The primary sex characteristics won't develop for another few weeks."

Zoe listened to the tiny thump thump thump unable to say anything else.

"The fetus is five centimeters long with a mass of seven grams and will increase in size by a factor of thirty in nine weeks," said River from the doorway. Everyone else was hovering in the lounge trying to look busy except Mal who was pretending so hard he actually was. "He's the size of a lime."

To say everyone was interested was an understatement. Kaylee wanted to know everything which panicked Simon some but didn't dim his own awe when he was checking Zoe over. "I don't think I'm ready," he confessed on one check up they snuck in when everyone else was in town buying supplies. "Plus I don't think having two babies on board at once would be in anyone's interest. Mal's going to be crazy enough as it."

"He'd probably space you," Zoe agreed solemnly.

Neither of them mentioned River.

When Zoe began to show, River started going on more jobs. Jayne complained but Mal insisted and River stuck close to Zoe though she never could figure out if Mal told the girl to or it was just River. She was the one who would come up to Zoe and rest her hand on the swell of her belly. "It's alive," she said once, and, "Babies are parasites." She also told Zoe how the sperm penetrates the egg and how one cell becomes two becomes four becomes eight and the rate of growth is f(x) = 0.15x^2 - 3.36x +18.9 on the assumption that Zoe was eating sufficient protein mash and leafy green vegetables.

They would sit on the couch in the galley, River resting against Zoe and sometimes Kaylee gave her a foot rub whether Zoe wanted one or not.

"My mama was always wanting her foot rubbed," Kaylee told her every time and then she would fill the space with a story about her folks and when so-and-so was pregnant. Slowly, Zoe began to appreciate how Kaylee managed not to get pregnant before she left home.

It was nice though. Zoe was never one to be pampered and girly things always was things for Kaylee and Inara, nothing against them, but they just wasn't for her. But she found herself minding less and less as tired set in her bones and they drew her into their fold. When Kaylee offered to run fetch things and Inara made her sit herself down for a massage, it was enough to make Zoe feel useless but also cared for after a day of tromping around planetside with a gun on her hip, pretending the sun weren't giving her the worst headache of her life. Days which were becoming fewer each time they made landfall and that would soon disappear.

The look on Jayne's face whenever he caught them all together was worth it though. He'd stomp around muttering about women and their plots and how any sexing couldn't be worth putting up with all this for months on end. He cared in his own way, though he's never admited it, tasteless jokes and crass remarks aside. He complained how Zoe wasn't no use for supply runs but wouldn't let her touch anything heavier than a gun. He blamed every order she gave him on mood swings but covered her chores when morning sickness kept her in her bunk. He whined about her eating too much but always left the last roll for her.

The biggest surprise though came when they were picking up their mail. It was crowded and hot on the station and too many smells had Zoe retreating back from the main concourse.

"Zoe!" Jayne was waving a piece of paper, his package held tight in his other hand as he shoved between Kaylee and Mal to get to her. It was a letter from his Ma to her bubbling with how Jayne had told her all about how Zoe'd been blessed and wasn't that exciting, she must be so happy and now don't worry if you're feeling like some creature up and took over your body and made you a useless mess, that's perfectly normal. It was heartfelt and full of advice and things to try for queasiness and sharp instructions to get some rest and not be running about like a crazy person.

Reading the words was like it meant that Zoe could let go some of the fear she carried and settled questions that kept her up at night with no one to ask for answers.

"You ain't crying, are you?" asked Jayne suspiciously.

"No," Zoe lied and reached over and gave him a hug right there, squashing his package between them.

"Oh no, come on. Mal! Look what she done. Get her off me!" But he was hugging her back.

Six months in and Zoe was done. She was ready for the baby to come, didn't matter that preparations were less than half finished. She was fat and winded all the time. Too slow to go on jobs even if Mal'd let her, too tired to help more'n a hour at a time around the boat. It was frustrating and everyone was being too nice and understanding, and without proper equipment Simon still wasn't sure if it was a girl or a boy.

Over all, Zoe was leaning less toward miracle of life and more toward parasite and if one more person offered to get her something she was going to put a hole in them.

The way the story should go from here was two and a half more months of Zoe storming and stomping and everyone else out of her way followed by a new tiny crewmember to make it all worth it. But plans never go according to plan and this is where the story takes a turn that no one expected.

Looking back, it was probably all River's fault for getting sick and leaving Mal and Jayne in a lurch, but it was probably better she weren't there after all, all things said and done. Everyone blames Mal anyway though it weren't really his fault either. Mostly bad luck was what it was, and according to Jayne who was there, Mal's smart mouth. In any case, the job went south.

Mal and Jayne went into the three horse town on some dusty backwater where communities hung together by threads of trains and prayer. Alliance was in the capital but for all their presence not really in control away from the northern continent. Mills and manufacturing brought Serenity there with a load of raw aluminum on the sly for one of the owners looking to undersell his competition the next town over.

At the meet, the bastard got it in his head that Mal wasn't delivering the promised quantity, was maybe planning to split his cargo between him and his competitors. "I don't neg on deals," Mal always says hotly at this point. "Son of a bitch was trying to swindle me."

The owner was smart enough though, and mayor to boot, and with his little town to benefit, weren't no trouble for his Tweedle Dees and Tweedle Dums to ask kindly for Mal and Jayne to stay awhile in the local lockup until the rest of the crew could deliver the shortfall.

This meant contacting Zoe. Seeing as her fingers weren't straying far from her pistol anyway, Simon and Kaylee silently agreed that it was a good thing trouble come calling. Not that they could have stopped her in any case. River was still puking her guts up so Simon didn't dare leave her alone. Kaylee offered but they all knew she didn't really mean it. "We need someone alert to guard the boat," Zoe said kindly.

So there Zoe goes, big belly, bigger guns, and carrying a sheet of metal Kaylee fashioned up quick like for her for when the bullets started flying. She took the mule of course but they didn't have near the asking price - "Greedy hwun dan!" - so the plan was vaguely to shoot whoever she had to to get Mal and Jayne out and avoid getting shot herself. Simple really.

Negotiation, as she expected, didn't get her anywhere. The owner - Hob or Hall or High Class Ass, depending on who you ask - took one look at Zoe and laughed.

"Come for your baby's daddy?" he guffawed. Four men in the room with them, at least three more on the streets and who knew who was in the jailhouse round the back with Mal and Jayne.

"It don't do to try and rip us off," said Zoe, forcing her voice to calm. The prospect of a fight soon was calming in its own way, a zen that she'd known she had missed but not how much till just then.

"Best run along, woman," said the High Class Ass. "You round out my price and you'll get your men back. I'll house them for a few days even, then you either pay up or pay collateral."

Watching his oily grin was when Zoe understood what he was about. He wanted Serenity, maybe to set up his own shipping business, and quicker than a fire jumping houses, Zoe was blind mad. She held it back with a steel vice borne from battle, but it didn't blaze no less. If there was one true fact out in the Black it was that rights to a ship's salvage didn't come till her crew was good and dead.

Weren't no way Zoe was letting that happen to Serenity.

When she left, men laughing and grinning and slapping their backs behind her, they didn't give her no mind. All they saw was a pregnant woman and not the arsenal stashed in the mule beside her. She figured that might give her an extra few second before they started shooting at her, but that would only balance how much slower she was now that she was moving for two.

Zoe got in the mule and puzzled them a bit by going toward the jail that was set back from the main throughway behind the Mayor's office, a rail fence setting apart a yard. Two men were lounging on the porch, feet up on a pair of rain barrels relaxed as you please.

"Hey now." One of the men who'd been loitering outside the office came with a buddy after her. "What you think your doing?" he asked. He forced the mule to a stop by trotting in front of it.

Zoe gave him a look and kept going about her business while he and his friend stared blankly and watched her heave herself off the mule and grab the shotgun. Didn't seem to gather the facts set out right in front of them.

What happened next is a bit fuzzy. Zoe remembers where everyone was: two at the jail porch ahead of her, two with her trying to stop her, one lingering behind with four more joining him when the first shots were fired. Zoe doesn't rightly remember who did that, but it weren't long before the two with her were down and screaming on the other side of the mule which she took for cover. Zoe was grateful she'd pulled down Kaylee's sheet first of all when two shots thunked it, blam, blam, from behind her.

Shots from both sides and folks was shouting and Zoe trapped with the mule between her and the jail and never feeling more pregnant than right then. Heart pounding like Simon said it shouldn't, she said to herself, "This maybe wasn't the best idea."

Still, that had never stopped her before and she held them all off and didn't think of when she had to reload.

The Ass was shouting at her during one of the lulls, but she didn't pay him no mind, focusing instead on getting her fat fingers to slot shells into the barrel of her shotgun. She hadn't quite figured out how she was getting out of this one. Her mind kept tripping over her belly and the little one she could feel squirming around and kicking up his displeasure at being in the middle of a firefight. She had to pause and take a deep breath to calm the fear that sprung up sudden and unbidden. It was only a moment but it didn't quite leave off knocking about the back of her head as she peered between the mule and shield and fired at the men who'd gotten a little too close.

"Hey!" one of the men from the jail called out. "You're outnumbered! Might as well save us all some trouble." Closer than he was a minute ago, Zoe risked a look around to see if he'd made the fence yet, trying to balance the risk of two versus five in her head and stopped short, retreating quickly back round the mule. Couldn't be, she thought, then poked her head around again.

This time he was the one to jerk his gun up and away. "You!"

"Dean." He was at the fence, not ten feet off, the other man still guarding the jail door, but Zoe was still stuck on Dean who she thought she'd left in that little mining town for good, standing there like he got whupped upside the head.

"What - What are you doing here?" He glanced back at the jail, thoughts clicking into place, because even if he hadn't recognized Mal and Jayne, seeing Zoe he clearly did now.

Mayor Ass was shouting at Dean, and from the other side the men were creeping forward again. Zoe turned and fired on them, sending them scuttling back, trusting Dean's shock to keep him quiet for a minute.

It kept his gun off her but spurred him into jumping the fence and striding over. Zoe quickly turned her aim on him but couldn't get off her knees and into a better position fast enough so that's where she was when he came around the mule. The look on his face when his eyes hit her belly was the only thing that stayed her trigger finger.

"You're pregnant!" he said rather foolishly, eyes wide and surprised. "What the hell are you doing out here pregnant?"

Zoe didn't roll her eyes as she flexed her fingers at the stupid question. "Stop right there," she said.

"Is one of them . . ." he jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the jail.

"No, but that ain't gonna stop me from getting them out," said Zoe. "Now unless you want to lose the parts of you that did this, I suggest you get out of my way. I'm not gonna be feeling charitable much longer."

Dean's eyes got wider, flickered back to her belly then up again, then over her head to the others who were closing in. And like that he made up his mind. Raised his gun on his fellows and fired three rapid shots even as he was reaching out a hand for Zoe.

"Come on!" he said when she hesitated. Zoe let her weapon fall and took his hand. "Sam!" he shouted to the man guarding the jailhouse. "Change of plans! Get those two out of there!" Then he was shoving Zoe into the mule while he covered her - two left behind them - and telling her to get them out of there. "Sam's getting your captain. He'll meet us 'round back."

And sure enough, Mal and Jayne, armed and confused, were following Sam out the cellar door when they pulled around back.

"Dean, ching-wahtsao duh liou mahng! What the hell?"

"Shut it, Sammy!"

It was about then that Mal cottoned on. "Zoe?" he said, giving Dean and Sam a barely contained look as they headed past the last edge of town back toward Serenity.

"Ran into some unexpected help," she said dryly because to be honest she didn't know what else to make of this turn of events. She was still a little stunned by what Dean'd done between one breath and the next and by getting out of there with less fuss than she'd thought to hope for. The baby was still kicking and squirming and that was getting to be a mite uncomfortable since she couldn't move much at the controls.

Dean snorted. "Imagine my surprise."

Sam gave him a sharp look then glanced over at Zoe then back at Dean. "You didn't," he said darkly.

"Apparently."

"Dean! Have you heard of contraception?" And Sam slapped him upside the head.

"Wait. This him?" said Jayne, finally catching up. "Ain't you supposed to be on Parth?"

Both Dean and Sam give him a look like they ain't supposed to be anywhere they don't want to be that Mal quickly interrupted 'cause for all that it was a right mess now, it had been a whole lot worse what with being locked up and some landlubber hwun dan after his ship.

"We thank you kindly for helping us out," he said. "If there's something we can lend a hand to . . ."

"We need out of town," said Sam with a quick glance over their shoulder to the pursuit that was mobilizing.

"And maybe a quick lift back after dark to get our things," added Dean. And that was how Dean and Sam Winchester ended up on Serenity for dinner.

The awkwardness was thick the rest of the way. Jayne filled most of by grumbling over the damage done to his guns and shooting Sam, who sat beside him, dark looks until Sam said, "Weren't my fault but I can break it proper now if you don't shut up."

Mal opened his mouth a couple times but one look at Zoe's stiff shoulders had him closing it again.

Kaylee was pacing out front of the ramp when they got back. "Captain!" She bounded over to them before they'd even stopped but it was Zoe she stopped at. "Zoe! You all right?" Simon followed after, sleeves of his sweater pushed up to help her down and it was a riot of checking folks over and getting half garbled explanations and introductions.

Mal herded everyone on board though and soon enough he was closing up and heading for the bridge with a brisk order to Jayne to "Watch them," as he passed. Simon drug Zoe to the infirmary for quick look over, the rest trailing and River poking her head out of the blanket she was wrapped in. She blinked at Dean and Sam.

"You brought ghosts," she said.

Dean and Sam both snapped their eyes up but Simon said quickly, "Yes, guests. Why don't you go lie back down." Nerves all a tingle for having River too close to strangers.

Zoe didn't talk much through the look over. She was worried and she could tell Simon was worried too, and honestly she didn't know what to do with Dean right then. Ignoring him till everything was fine seemed like the better plan.

Because, see, Zoe knew that the only thing that mattered was her baby. Hers. She didn't much care what Dean thought or wanted. He wasn't a part of it no more. Hadn't been for a long while now and all this was just coincidence that was cluttering everything up. She wasn't going to leave Serenity, Dean wasn't going to stay. Like ships passing in the Black they were and that was just fine with her.

Dean now, he didn't see it that way.

When the baby checked out and Zoe checked out, Simon stood and started putting his things away. Dean was leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest and a frown on his face. He'd been shut out with the others, Jayne keeping an eye out while Mal flew them to the northern continent to pick up Inara, Kaylee keeping an eye on River. But he'd kept an eye of his own out and as soon as Simon started putting his things away, there he was.

Zoe stared back a bit exasperated because it really weren't no concern of his, but she didn't get up while Simon cleared up and out. A talk was coming and here was as good as anyplace.

"So," said Dean, closing the door once they were alone. Zoe sat back in the chair and forced herself to relax, waiting for him to go on. It didn't take long for the silence to work its magic. "Mine?" he asked again.

"Mine," Zoe corrected him. "But yes."

"You weren't planning on telling me at all."

"Weren't planning a lot of things," said Zoe.

"But you lied when you said it was fine when we . . ." said Dean, hurt in his voice.

"Yes." Zoe wasn't sorry, but she was starting to feel bad for him. He was a tough strong man trying to stay in his armor but she'd seen a spark of his love of life back then in that bar and she saw a spark of how much this did matter to him right now. She hadn't thought it would. But it shouldn't have surprised her that it did. He'd been the one reminding her of Wash after all.

And he was angry now. "So what, you was just gonna raise him on your own?"

"I got my crew," said Zoe, calm and comfortable in the certainty of that.

"A child needs two parents."

"He won't lack for a family. Besides, what are you going to do. Drop everything and follow along?"

"I can." He was serious. No hint of hesitation or reluctance, and didn't that take all.

But Zoe shook her head. "I don't want you to." She had everything she needed right here. She didn't need someone new to come in and fuss over her or butt heads with Mal. Enough of that around here as it was. "Look," she said. "I wanted a child. I didn't want another husband."

Dean went still and quiet, hearing what there was to hear in that. Finally, he sighed, the anger going right out of him. "You still picked me," he said halfway between a question and a statement, looking impossibly nervous about the notion.

It felt like they'd come to something of an understanding. Zoe smiled. "You were singing."

Dinner that night was tense from the outset between everyone else except Zoe and Dean, though Dean didn't know quite what to do with himself. Both of them were uncomfortable at the table and Sam kept sending looks to Dean to behave but he only had to kick him once when he smiled too long at Kaylee.

Mal noticed too. "So Dean, how did you end up way out here?"

Dean and Sam shared a look, Sam frowning and glancing at Zoe. Dean paused, but said, "We ride the circuit," which made everyone stop and stare.

"What?" asked Simon, looking at everyone in confusion.

There's a couple kind of circuit riders, folk who hitch a ride from planet to planet, never settling down in one spot too long before moving on. There's the preachers who go to bring the Lord's word to those places that may be lacking. There's the solicitors who do the same out of charity and a general hatred of the Alliance and sometimes ride together in their own ships. There's the peddlers who are hoping to get enough of a start to get their own trade going and ship of their own. And then there are the folk most people think of first when they talk about the circuit: story chasers who are after more than stories, men and women who follow tall tales and ghost stories, walking softly and carrying big sticks to answer prayers that God can't.

Mal and Zoe first saw them walking the battlefields during the war, and Jayne and Kaylee knew them from childhood camp fires. They were like myths themselves 'cept to the folk that encountered them.

"We were working to earn up for passage offworld," Sam said into the silence. "If you drop us off wherever you're heading next, that'd square us up."

Dean and Sam stayed on through the two weeks it took to get to Beaumonde and then stayed on for the next ride to Aberdeen since they claimed there was enough men-shen, as they called them, on Beaumonde already. From the way Dean's eyes flickered at every purple belly that walked past, Mal figured they'd run into a spot of trouble of their own. It was reassuring in its own way.

Turns out the two were brothers and had been riding the circuit their whole lives with their father till recently. They didn't say much about themselves beyond that but there was a story there for another day. They were willing to make themselves useful around the boat and it was clear they'd spent time in the Black.

"Had our own boat growing up," said Dean one night when he'd shadowed Mal to the bridge. "Crashed hard a while back."

"I'm sorry." Mal couldn't fathom the hurt of losing Serenity like that. Too close was bad enough, and it wouldn't have been possible to recover her without the payoff from the Operative.

Dean shrugged, too casual. "She's at a friend's. When we pass through we put her back together a little more."

Time passed genially enough. Dean was a flirt but his interest in engines was genuine and the looks he sent Zoe were enough to keep Mal's ire in check. Sam spent his time with Simon. "He wanted to learn as much first aid as he could from a real doctor," says Simon. "And no wonder with the lives they lead."

But those are stories for them to tell when they're in a generous mood some day. It wasn't that trip when things was so new. Back and forth went over people and places but not the guay, not the Signal, and not River who they looked at with strange eyes and meaningful glances between them, but they kept their peace.

Zoe remembers spending that time watching and waiting. Waiting for the baby. Watching Dean, and even Sam, for some sign of how her baby'd turn out. Big as she was, she spent her time ripping and restitching shirts mostly, making them small and as snug and warm as they were colorful. Dean kept his distance at first, not sure how to take her quiet, but then one day he sat down beside her and took up needle and thread, avoiding her raised eyebrow. He didn't say nothing till he was done, then he said, "Don't tell Sam."

Zoe had a feeling Sam knew anyway. He would get a look in his eye when he watched his brother then shake his head at him when Dean glanced over, a tiny knowing smile speaking of secrets Dean kept close.

There was no falling in love. No deep connection forged in the middle of the night. Zoe's feet remained unswept beneath her, and every day he stayed, the less she saw of Wash in Dean and more of Jayne. But for all that, she found herself liking him in the moments in between, and when he hovered with the rest when Simon looked her over again, she waved him in.

"You want to listen to his heart?" she asked.

"Yeah?" Dean's eyes went wide and it took her gesturing him over to get him to come kneel beside her. "That's . . . that's amazing," he breathed. When he grinned at her after, it was enough to light up the Black.

They reached Aberdeen a few days later. "Listen," Dean said before heading down the ramp. "We'll be walking this world a while. Send me a wave, yeah?"

"I will." Zoe nodded. "Dean," she called as he stepped away. "I know I ain't said it . . . Thank you." He rested his hand on her belly and nodded once, then turned and went on his way.

"He raised me, you know." Sam paused in following. His eyes held all the love he had for his brother and plea for her to do more than just wave. Zoe understood and when Sam's eyes drifted down to the life that was his family too, she caught his hand briefly. He huffed a chuckle and ducked his head. "She's gonna be something else," he said through his hair, then he let her go and joined his brother, bumping his shoulder as they started walking on. Both of them looked back once.

When they were gone, things settled back into the old rhythm for all of three weeks before it changed forever.

No one likes this part of the story retold in much detail. Pain and cries, blood and life, fifteen solid hours of Zoe crushing Mal's hand and Simon staying calm enough for everyone. River had the helm but kept popping down to see how it was going and to tell Jayne, Kaylee, and Inara useless facts that more often than not sent a shudder through them.

Soon enough though, there was a baby's cries cutting through the walls, loud and healthy, and suddenly the door to the infirmary weren't big enough for everyone rushing in.

Zoe had a girl. A tiny, itty, bitty girl.

It was like all the 'verse had changed.

Zoe was exhausted but never happier than she was when Simon passed her little girl into her arms, all that tired and pain just dropping away. Kaylee and Inara was already cooing and Mal and Jayne couldn't stop smiling wide and happy. The first one to reach out, though, was River. "Wash thinks she's beautiful," she said.

The room went still, but whether it was fey speaking or heard true, Zoe knew it for the truth and she smiled.

She named her baby Sao-Ts'ing Niang Washburne for the goddess of fair weather after rain and Jayne complained that that was putting unfair pressure on the poor kid when there weren't no weather in the Black.

"It's a metaphor," said Simon.

"Still stupid," Jayne still grumbles but no one pays him no mind. Change did come with the little one, and while the jobs weren't really better and hurt didn't come less, there was more laughter, more good surprises and breathing free seemed a mite easier.

It was near six weeks before they made it back to Aberdeen. Two figures were waiting for them at the docks, duffels at Sam's feet while Dean fidgeted back and forth. He barely paused for the ramp to touch down before breaking all sorts of unwritten rules and dashing up to meet Zoe who'd come to greet them. Sao was in her arms, tiny and asleep for once, the landing calming her down in a way that no amount of walking would.

He was afraid to touch her at first, just staring, stunned, until Sam came up behind him and said softly, "Wow." Then Dean gently took Sao from Zoe's arms like he'd been doing it since the day she was born.

Mal says he don't know what came over him when he offered Dean and Sam another ride. "Free babysitters," he says loudly. "And extra hands I don't have to pay in coin. It's not because I like them." Simon always rolls his eyes here because Mal doesn't like him either.

Late one night when Zoe was feeding Sao up in the galley, Dean wandered in. He stopped being shy after that first time he held his daughter and pitched in with holding and diapers along with everyone else. Three days in and it seemed like him and Sam had always been there. "Tea?" he asked heading for the kettle.

"Yes. That'd be nice," said Zoe who hadn't been this tired since the blitz bombing at Serenity Valley. It wasn't a thought to linger though, not with Sao in her arms, at her breast, depending on her for everything. It was a huge thought, but Zoe didn't feel the weight holding her down or scaring her off. Most of the time anyway.

Dean set out the tea and sat across from her, looking at Sao eat with fascination. He smiled when he saw Zoe watching him. For all his easy confidence when it came to taking care of Sao, he was still surprised that she was there at all.

"You ever want a child?" Zoe found herself asking.

"What? No," said Dean, startled, but his eyes wouldn't meet hers and finally, after a long quiet, he added, "Just didn't seem possible. Or safe. Way we live . . . job's dangerous and no place for a kid." He smiled wanly, and Zoe, knowing what little she did, reckoned he knew a thing or two about that.

"Could say the same of Serenity," she said quietly.

"You're a braver woman than me." He sat there looking at her, looking for something, like she was a puzzle he still couldn't figure. It was a look Zoe'd get to know over the years, and it never stopped amusing her.

"Time came," was all she said.

Dean chewed that over slowly, eyes drifting back to Sao and softening. "Guess it did," he said.

Full up, Sao pulled off and Zoe lifted her to pat her back.

"Hey Zoe." A smile danced around Dean's face. "I know I ain't said it, but thanks."

That part don't get told much, but Zoe and Dean know it and if the rest of them only see the edges, that's just fine with them. Mostly the story gets a little fuzzy at this point, breaking into that time when Sao got colic and kept them all up round the clock, or that time when Kaylee and River decided to play dress up when Zoe was taking a nap and didn't leave a note, or that time when Mal got caught playing dinosaurs with her on the bridge. Shifts and changes depending on who's telling and who's there to interrupt and then it's the story of Sao starting to talk and starting to walk and her first trip planetside with Dean and Sam when she was two. No truth is more certain than time keeps marching forward and children keep sprouting with it.

There's no end to this story yet, and that's the way Zoe intends to keep it as she dusts off skinned knees and washes that mouth out for cursing. Teaches Sao to sew and hold a gun so when she goes off with her father and uncle she'll come back whole and sound. Lets her follow Kaylee and Simon and River around the boat asking a thousand questions. Curls up with her in their bunk at bedtime and tells her about Mal the Sergeant, about faith, hope, and loss. Tells her about finding a way forward, finding a crew worth fighting for, about Shepherd Book and Wash.

Sao is still the most amazing thing in the 'verse, on that point everyone agrees. And if everyone takes credit, well, Zoe don't mind that much.


End file.
